


baby we'll be fine

by napricot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Making Out, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Slice of Life, Superhero problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 17:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20068186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napricot/pseuds/napricot
Summary: “Just to clarify, when you say vampires, you mean literal, actual vampires. Not, like, aliens that act like vampires,” asked Bucky slowly.“They’re literal, actual vampires, yes,” said Blade, a combination of words that Sam had never wanted to hear outside of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “And I’ve been fighting them since they killed my mom.” Sam couldn’t see his eyes, but Blade’s whole face went tense and his next words came like he was forcing them out. “l could really use some superhero backup.”This, Sam reminded himself, was his life now. Being Cap. Living with Bucky. Knowing about...vampires. He took a deep breath in, let it out slow.Vampires are realhe tried, testing it out. It didn’t feel great.Sam discovers he's gotlimitson this superhero bullshit. Bucky sympathizes.





	baby we'll be fine

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The National song of the same name, and inspired by the recent news that Blade is joining the MCU and [this tumblr post](https://thesuperheroesnetwork.tumblr.com/post/185419648837/captain-america-so-do-any-avengers-have-any), which got about 1000x funnier to me when I imagined Sam being the one saying no, to the point where I briefly abandoned my current, way more serious never-ending WIP to write this bit of dumb lolz. The extent of my knowledge about Blade is misty memories of the Wesley Snipes Blade movie, a quick read of the wiki article, and how handsome Mahershala Ali is.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me, Cap.” 

“Of course,” said Sam automatically. “Always good to meet new superheroes.”

This was a lie. The so-called Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, were obnoxious assholes, Dr. Strange was a high-handed wizard dick, and Jessica Jones was the surliest person Sam had ever met in his life. Sam was Captain America now though, and _ always good to meet new superheroes _ was the kind of thing Cap said, probably. 

And hey, maybe this new guy would be cool. Nothing about this Blade guy screamed asshole or nut job right off the bat, so that was a good start. Sure, he was covered head to toe in black leather, and yeah, so he had two huge swords or katanas or whatever strapped to his back--which, okay, explained the name, at least. Sam had still met weirder. He shot a quick glance Bucky’s way, just to check in, and relaxed a little when he saw that Bucky wasn’t any more alarmed or suspicious than normal, just alert and interested. 

Thus assured that this at least wouldn’t _ immediately _turn into a fight, Sam let Blade into the apartment with a welcoming smile, wishing all over again that this meeting was going down in Avengers HQ instead of his and Bucky’s apartment. But nearly a year out from what folks were now calling the Blip, the new HQ was still under construction, and the new Avengers were still a bit of a ramshackle operation, what with the universe-wide post-post-apocalyptic situation. So when the New York superhero grapevine got word to him that some guy named Blade wanted a word with Captain America on superhero business, Sam didn’t have much of a choice but to extend an invitation to his actual apartment. At least that way if things turned violent or weird, no one else would be caught in the crossfire. 

Given the polite if stilted small talk they were all managing, Sam had hopes that violence was off the table. Also that there wasn’t an apocalypse imminent, because surely if there was, Blade wouldn’t be talking about how nice it was that this neighborhood was getting back on its feet after the Blip. The small talk faltered into awkwardness as Blade stepped past the entryway into the hallway, when Bucky shifted minutely towards the hall closet and Blade tensed up. 

“Did you want to take off your, uh, swords?” asked Bucky. “Or, your coat…” he added, eyeing Blade’s knee-length leather coat. Even Fury took his coat off when he came to their apartment. At least, he did after Sam told him _ you can take your damn coat off, Fury, there’s no dramatic breeze in here to make it flap intimidatingly. You’re here for dinner and a debrief, for fuck’s sake _. 

“I’m fine, thanks,” said Blade. 

Sam waited for him to at least take his sunglasses off, but he didn’t. A tiny, confused furrow took up residence on Bucky’s forehead, and Sam knew exactly what it meant: Bucky was wondering how the hell Blade could sit down with two fuck-off big swords strapped to his back. Sam widened his eyes at Bucky to convey that yeah, he was wondering about that too, but the swords were sheathed, at least, so they wouldn’t stab into the couch…Bucky’s lips pressed together in a doubtful line, but he led the way into the living room anyway. 

“Right, okay, sure,” said Sam, after the silence had stretched about two beats too long to be natural. “Come on into the living room, and tell us what you need.” 

It turned out Blade’s blades did just fine on the couch, so long as Blade sat perched on the edge of the couch cushion. Sam knew exactly how much squishy gravity those cushions exerted—Bucky had specifically bought the damn thing because _ it’s like a cloud that’s trying to eat me, I love it—_so this was a reasonably impressive display of core strength.

Bucky took a seat on the loveseat while Sam stayed standing, vaguely intending to offer Blade coffee or tea or something, but before he could, Blade said, “I need to talk to you about vampires.”

And there it was: shit getting weird. Sam crossed his arms over his chest and gave Blade the hairy eyeball. To think, he’d seemed so normal, apart from the swords and the sunglasses indoors.

“Excuse me?” 

* * *

“...so the vampire threat is real, and I could use some help fighting them.”

Sam stared at him.

“No.”

“Please,” added Blade in a gritty voice, like manners were the problem here. “There are so many of them.”

Sam nodded. Of course there were. He slid the helpful dossier full of vampire facts Blade had provided them back across the coffee table. Of fucking course Sam had been running around Europe on the hunt for the asshole sitting next to him, totally unaware that they’d all been narrowly avoiding getting involved in an actual war against actual Dracula the whole damn time. This was Sam’s life now, sure.

God, Bucky better not have known about the actual war against actual Dracula. He shot a quick look Bucky’s way, and was met with the faintly enraged eyebrow action and fully _ fuck this _ jaw clenching of Bucky’s finest _ why are our lives like this _expression. Sam saw that expression a lot, since they’d returned to life.

“Just to clarify, when you say vampires, you mean literal, actual vampires. Not, like, aliens that act like vampires,” asked Bucky slowly.

“They’re literal, actual vampires, yes,” said Blade, a combination of words that Sam had never wanted to hear outside of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “And I’ve been fighting them since they killed my mom.” Sam couldn’t see his eyes, but Blade’s whole face went tense and his next words came like he was forcing them out. “l could really use some superhero backup.”

This, Sam reminded himself, was his life now. Being Cap. Living with Bucky. Knowing about...vampires. He took a deep breath in, let it out slow. _ Vampires are real _he tried, testing it out. It didn’t feel great. 

Actually, you know what, this was _ not _ Sam’s life. Sam had _ boundaries_. Sam had _ limits_. Sam was _ Captain America _ and he did _ not _have superpowers, so there had to be some cold, hard, non-negotiable exceptions to the villainy he could reasonably be expected to thwart, and he’d just found the first exception. 

“Uh huh, I hear you,” he told Blade, because it was important to validate his fellow superheroes’ experiences and struggles. Then he added, “No.”

“What?”

“Hard pass from me, man. No can do.”

Blade turned to Bucky in silent appeal. “Are they Nazi vampires?” asked Bucky, with admirable calm. 

Bucky’s left arm was stretched out along the back of the loveseat, seemingly loose and casual, his left thigh pressing up against Sam’s with careless closeness. Sam wasn’t sure which of those things was more comforting. Probably the arm; there was a gun taped to the back of the loveseat, in easy reach of Bucky’s hand. The still and patient warmth of him was a damn close second though, and Sam let himself lean against him, just a little bit, for just a second, a silent _ what the fuck_. Bucky leaned back, which meant _ I know! _ and _ I’ve got your back_.

“They don’t really have an ideology—” 

“Then no,” said Bucky. 

God, Sam loved this asshole. “It’s just not our area of expertise, sorry,” said Sam, and stood up. “Try Dr. Strange over on Bleecker Street.”

For a tense half-minute, the possibility of violence turned the air heavy and crackling. Blade managed to loom while staying seated; behind his dark sunglasses, his eyes gleamed with an unsettling, unnatural glow. Bucky did his Winter Soldier thing. At least, Sam assumed he did. There was a general aura of chilly, predatory menace emanating from the loveseat. A not insignificant part of Sam’s hindbrain, the part that had some deep ancestral memory of being prey, wanted to run the fuck away from the apex predator showdown that seemed to be brewing between Blade and Bucky. Sam ignored it, and did his best Captain America, which consisted of his carefully calibrated personal mix of Steve’s noble gravitas and his own  _ do not fuck with me  _ realness.

It worked, thank fuck. Like turning off a switch, Blade went back to looking like nothing more than a handsome black guy whose fashion taste was on the goth end, and Bucky subsided back to steady watchfulness. Blade’s expression was unreadable what with the sunglasses, but his heavy sigh was resigned and unsurprised rather than murderously enraged, and his swords stayed sheathed. Crisis averted, probably.

“Well, I tried,” said Blade, and rose from the couch. “Bleecker Street, you said?”

“Yeah. Ask for Wong if Dr. Strange isn’t in,” Sam told him.

“Thanks.” 

“We’ll, uh, let you know if we run into any vampires,” said Bucky.

“Or you could just take care of them yourselves.”

“No,” said Sam. “We’ll let you know.”

“Okay. Great. Thanks,” said Blade, voice decidedly strained now. “I guess...I’ll let you know if I run into any aliens, or Nazis, or whatever.”

Sam clapped him on the shoulder. “Now you’re getting how this works. Nice meeting you, Blade.”

* * *

After they saw Blade out, they both ended up back on the loveseat.

“Vampires are _ real_,” muttered Sam. 

“Yeah.”

“Tell me you didn’t know vampires are real,” he demanded, and Bucky tugged him close until he tilted inexorably into Bucky’s chest and wrapped his arms around him.

“I didn’t know vampires are real.”

“You were in Romania, you sure you didn’t run into any?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Fuck, does this mean werewolves are real? We shoulda asked.”

“Oh, Steve never told you about that mission in France? We thought Frenchie was fucking with us by telling all these folk stories about the Beast of Gévaudan, but then Steve got bit by a werewolf while we were schlepping through the forest looking for HYDRA. On the plus side, the werewolf had eaten the Nazis, so. Mission coulda gone worse.”

Sam sat up and twisted his neck to get a proper look at Bucky’s pensive face. “What?”

Bucky just nodded. “Yeah, fun times with Capwolf until the serum kicked in and healed him.”

Had Sam not just learned of the existence of vampires from some dude named Blade, this would have seemed immediately and obviously unbelievable. Now he was seriously wondering if Steve had just neglected to ever mention that one time he’d gotten turned into a werewolf.

“You’re fucking with me,” said Sam, and it came out way more uncertain than it should have. He narrowed his eyes at Bucky, who just looked innocently back at him until he broke and his lips twitched into a telltale crooked grin.

“Yeah, I’m fucking with you. Got that one from the dumb Cap comics,” said Bucky, and pulled Sam back down for some more aggressive cuddling.

Sam wasn’t thrilled about a lot of the changes in the world and in his life after the Blip, but this was one he didn’t mind: Bucky becoming the patient, still center of gravity in a new life that was hard to recognize sometimes. When Sam had thought he couldn’t handle any of it—not the shield, not missing five years, not losing Natasha, not Steve retiring, too many bewildering, cascading changes and heartbreaks in this post-Thanos world—Bucky had stepped up and stuck by him, like it was easy, like it was obvious. It had taken all of six months for their partnership to turn into something more, after that. They’d spent one stubborn month pretending it was just friends with benefits, but Bucky had a total lack of chill and had to put in a significant amount of actual effort to _ not _be a Good Boyfriend, which was, ugh, extremely cute, and Sam ended up kinda, sorta falling for the asshole. 

“I’ve got limits, Bucky,” Sam mumbled into said asshole’s chest. “I can handle the Nazis, and I can handle a dude who can turn ant-sized, and I can handle the raccoon with a machine gun, and I can handle the aliens, and I can handle being turned into dust for five years—!”

“Yeah, no, I’m not sure you _ have _ handled that...?”

Sam squeezed Bucky tightly. “I _ can handle being turned into dust for five years_. But I draw the fucking line at vampires. Vampires, Bucky! That’s bullshit. I am not _ equipped _for dealing with vampires. I cannot be expected to deal with vampires. Zombies, maybe, yeah, but vampires? Nah.”

Bucky made comforting sounds that were pleasantly rumbly with Sam’s ear up so close to Bucky’s chest, and he kept sweeping a broad, warm hand up and down Sam’s spine. 

“Definitely not our beat, you’re right,” murmured Bucky. “...I’ll get some silver bullets, though. And some UV flashbangs. Just in case.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Sam. So vampires were real. Whatever. They could deal with it, if they had to. They’d dealt with worse, and weirder.

Before he could brood too much about the worse and weirder they'd already dealt with, Bucky pressed a warm kiss to the top of his head, and chased the sweetness of the gesture with a sly migration of his right hand up under Sam’s shirt to get them skin to skin.

“Did you know you used the Cap voice with Blade?” 

Bucky’s voice had dipped down to its bourbon and honey register, low and smooth in a way that made Sam burn hot every damn time. Sam shifted more fully into Bucky’s lap, and let his own hands wander in search of Bucky’s bare skin. When he got his hands on Bucky’s hips, he was rewarded with a happy little hum and and a nuzzle that turned into a quick kiss to his neck, then another, more lingering one to his mouth. 

“Since when do I have a Cap voice? I didn’t have a Falcon voice, this is just how I sound.”

“Uh huh, sure. You’ve got a Cap voice now, you just used it with Blade. Very stern and dignified.”

The smirk on Bucky’s lips suggested he was teasing, but the way his eyes crinkled was pure affection, and that felt like gliding on a thermal, safe and easy, like he owned the whole boundless sky.  _ Sappy, Wilson, _ he told himself, but he kissed Bucky anyway.

“And dignified is what does it for you?” he asked in between kisses that were getting more and more heated. “Can’t say I was expecting that.”

“Nah,” said Bucky, and brought his vibranium hand up to cup Sam’s neck, his thumb resting lightly where Sam’s pulse beat. The vibranium of his left arm was never entirely cold, but it was still cooler than a flesh and blood arm, and when Bucky touched him with it like this, there was always some careful wonder in the gesture, at his ability to be feather gentle, at Sam’s willingness to let him. “What does it for me is seeing you after, when you’re, uh, just Sam again.”

“You goddamn sweet talker,” said Sam, charmed by the pink flush rising on Bucky’s cheekbones.

Before he could make that flush travel further via even more mutually pleasurable activities than necking on the couch, the Avengers alert blared on both his and Bucky’s phones.

Sam groaned and grabbed his phone. It wasn’t coded as a high level threat, thankfully, and apparently Maria Hill was on comms duty today, because the alert read:  _ GIANT TURTLES IN THE SEWERS IN MIDTOWN?? Possibly they’re tortoises, I’m not a biologist. I don’t even know, get to the Tower and deal with it. _

“Are giant turtles our beat?” asked Bucky, squinting at the phone screen. “I feel like that should be the Spiderkid’s beat.”

“Don’t enable juvenile delinquency, Barnes, Parker’s got class right now. They’re in Midtown though, isn’t that Daredevil’s patch?” 

Sam got up anyway, resigned to how his near future was gonna involve giant turtles and/or tortoises. He gave Bucky a hand up from the loveseat, and led the way to their bedroom where they kept their gear.

“Daredevil only deals with human monsters, I think,” said Bucky.

“Of course. You know, what is even the point of being a superhero if you’re gonna be limiting yourself to like six square blocks’ worth of human villainy?” Sam yanked out the pile of kevlar and body armor from the portion of the walk-in closet dedicated to their gear. “Whatever. Guess we can add mutant turtles to the list of weird shit we deal with.”

“Better than vampires. Hopefully.”

“God, don’t jinx it.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> While Bucky's version of the story here is one I made up, [Werewolf Captain America aka Capwolf](https://www.cbr.com/i-love-ya-but-youre-strange-the-glorious-debut-of-capwolf/) is a legit thing that happened in the comics, to my delight.


End file.
